The Existential Horror of Honest Ed's
by David N. Brown
Summary: Can Scott Pilgrim escape from a retail center's warp in space-time?  David N. Brown resides in Mesa, Arizona.
1. Chapter 1

**Over the last couple months, I collected and read the Scott Pilgrim books. All in all, I liked vol. 3 best, and as a long-time contributor to this site, I knew I _had_ to do something with this...**

"Say," Scott said to Stephen and Julie, "didn't you guys break up?"

Stephen shrugged. "Say," Ramona said, "where are we going?" Scott shrugged.

"I told Scott, we're going to Honest Ed's," Julie said. "I need... you know... party stuff."

"Right, cause there's nothing you need more than throwing another party," Stephen snarked.

"Say," Scott said, "didn't Todd Ingram implode the entire store two months ago? Y'know, when I totally beat him, but he cheated? I distinctly remember there being a lot of rubble..."

"Yeah, we saw that from the parking lot," Ramona said to Julie. "How did it reopen this soon?"

"It reopened three _days _after Todd leveled it," Julie said, rather indifferently (more so than usual).

"It always comes back. The same thing happened one of those times Todd punched a hole in the moon, and meteorites destroyed half of Toronto."

"Oh, yeah!" Scott said. "I think I kinda remember hearing about something like that."

"Scott," said Kim, walking beside Wallace, "are there ever any times when your head _isn't_ shoved up your crack?"

"I think when he's playing Super Mario 3," Wallace said.

"That's po-tay-to, po-tah-to, Wallace."

"Oh."

"I still don't get what the big deal is," Stephen said.

"Well, it's like I was explaining before," Julie said. "Y'know how, when a baby's born, it just cries, and cries, at the sheer horror of being alive?"

"Um. Yeah... What's that have to do with Honest Ed's?"

"It's because, in the bottom of their little minds... they remember Honest Ed's."

"Uh... How's a newborn baby going to remember anything?"

"Reincarnation. Precognition. Something like that. It's like, the store warps space-time"

"Right! Like, Comeau was telling me about it," Wallace said. "'Cuz, you know, he's the guy who knows everything about everybody. Before Honest Ed built the place, he learned the secrets of time and space from, like, the Kabalah or something. So, during construction, he did all kinds of mystic rituals and tesseract engineering an' stuff to give the store infinite floor space. They say it was all to get around the high cost of real estate."

"But how could he afford the merchandise to fill an infinite volume?" Kim asked.

"Well, since the store warps space-time, he could go to any time and any place to find the best deals. Ever heard how Honest Ed's is always the first place in town to have something available? That's 'cuz they get inventory from the future. Probably parallel universes, too."

"Wow. So, like, if you buy a copy of _The Matrix Reloaded_ at Honest Ed's, it could be the cut from an alternate reality where it didn't suck?"

"Right!"

"Cool."

"So how does warping space and time get a store rebuilt in three days?" Ramona asked.

"Oh, there's different theories," Wallace said. "Maybe they transplant a whole, identical building from another dimension. Or, they might accelerate time on the premises to get work done faster. Or, they may just use the time warp to access the places and times with the cheapest labor."

"Um," Scott stammered as they approached the massive slab of the store, "I, uh, I think I'll j-just wait out here. 'Cuz, one time I almost died in there. Not the time I fought Todd, though, 'cuz I was totally kicking his butt. I mean, I had hockey gloves, a good bicycle helmet, and the coolest pair of wraparound sunglasses, and all he'd done was assemble... a gun, or something. _Totally_ lame."

"C'mon, Scott," Ramona said, "what would I do without you. To. Um... Hold my bag?"

"This suuucks!" Scott whined as he was led by the arm into the store.

"I'm sure there's something you will like," she cajoled a few aisles in.

"But this aisle is nothing but cheap, tacky gag gifts... okay, maybe. But this is just creepy." He eyed a Billy Bass look-alike that looked even more silly and grotesque than the original.

"Whoa! _Batman and Robin_ merchandise! Kitsch motherlode... hold my bag."

Scott clutched the bag and looked at his shoes. If he only looked at what was right in front of him, the store wasn't so overwhelming. He bit his lip to stop his teeth from chattering, but he didn't feel in danger of losing bladder control. Then he heard the voice, soft and slightly sibilant. _"Scott."_ He squeezed his eyes shut as it continued: "_Scott. Scott. Scott. Scott..._"

Finally, his will broke, and he looked, in the direction of the ghoulish fake fish. It turned his head to look directly at him with two glazed eyes as it said again, _"Scott!"_

"What do you want from me, you abomination from the depths of subspace?" he cried.

"_Scott... Select anime, 20% off for a limited time, on level 3."_

Ramona returned at the sound of the scream, to find her bag dropped on the floor, and no sign of her boyfriend except a still-receding cry


	2. Chapter 2

**Put this on the back burner while I was working on "Zombieland" Vegas Saga stuff (oh yeah, and a master's degree), but I decided the next chapter (already pretty well-planned) would be a good change of pace.**

"This sucks," said Young Neil. "Sucks! SUCKS! _Suuuucks._"

"Yes," said Kim Pines, "you mentioned your opinion that this place sucks."

"Nobody made you come," Julie said.

"Uh, actually," said Knives, "I thought you kinda did."

"Yeah," said Wallace, "Stephen said you'd never give him any again if he couldn't get enough us to all come."

Julie "hmph"ed, glaring sidelong at Stephen. "Like that would work," she said. Stephen shrugged.

"So," said Kim, "what was wrong with the last thirty white table cloths we looked at?"

"I don't want white," Julie said, "I want Cream White #2."

"C'mon," Wallace said, "I'm one of the only guys in Toronto with fashion sense, and I'm tellin' ya, they're all just white!"

Knives glanced at a sign. "Level three," she said. "I didn't think this place was tall enough for a third level."

Wallace shrugged. "It probably isn't, on the outside."

"Okaayy," Julie said, "now we're on to something... Hold my bag, Steph..."

"`Steph'?" Wallace said. "Dude, your girlfriend just called you a girl's name! Are you going to but up with that?" Stephen shrugged.

Scott's hands trembled as he clutched a semi-random selection of anime. "I bought the stuff," he told himself feverishly. "Now they'll let me go. Won't they?" His eyes darted about manically. "Yeah. I did what the fish said. Now they gotta let me go... _Dear God, why won't they let me go?_"

"Scott!" Ramona exclaimed. "There you are! What, you bought more anime? Hey, you already have two of these!"

"The fish told me to!" Scott said. "I couldn't leave if I didn't! But I think we're trapped anyway!"

"Scott!" Ramona said, gently but firmly gripping his shoulders. "Of course we can leave! Don't be silly. I'm ready to blow this place, anyway."

Scott nodded. "I don't know what I'd do without you, Rammy."

"I already told you, that's the worst pet name ever... Still, that's sweet. I just need to tell Julie... Oh, I see her! It'll just take a minute. Just stay right here."

"Okay," Scott said, already drifting off.

"Where's Kim and Wallace?" Ramona said.

"Oh, I sent them to find, um... something," Julie said. Having already put enough things in Stephen's arms to hide much of his face, she added instead to an already impressive load of Young Neil's.

"She just made us split up because he wouldn't put up with this!" Neil said.

"Well, anyway, I'm going, so you'll have to finish without me," Ramona said. "Oh, no, where's Scott off to now?..."

"_Take me!"_ Neil wailed after her.

Ramona found Scott by the sound of a scream. He almost staggered into her, looking even more wild-eyed than before. "Scott! What happened? Did you see something again?"

He stared at her with the eyes of one who had seen an abomination unthinkable in a billion years in a billion time-space continua. "Th- tha-at... way... ar-ra-round the corner," he stammered, pointing back.

"What? What did you thi- what did you see?"

"Wa- Wa... Wall-ll..."

"Wallace?"

Scott nodded fervently. "An- an' K-K- Kim.."

"What about Wallace and Kim? They came here with us. Julie said she told them to split off to get more of the shopping done."

"M- mma- making out!" For a moment, Ramona looked merely nonplussed. Then, as her eyes began to widen, Scott shrieked, "With each other!"

"Dude!" said Wallace. He stepped up from behind Ramona, with Kim following behind. "What's all the noise about?"

**Bonus! Alternate movie cast**

Kim- (still) Allison Pill

Wallace- Dan Byrd (Pretty well typecast himself into a corner with "Easy A")

Cuomo- Jensen Ackles

Envy- Emma Stone

Scott- Ashton Kutcher? (If he could be aged back to 2000 or so)

Ramona- ?


End file.
